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The religious faith and sensibilities of men, as they express themselves in worship, are a most distinguishing Rights of worship. part of our nature. We cannot properly say that a person has a right to his religious opinions as long as they are unexpressed, or to his convictions of duty; these are not rights which might be waived, but belong to a higher domain of the soul which rights cannot enter, and they must be carried out into the appropriate acts. When, however, there is an expression of religious faith and feeling, it becomes a right more sacred than any other, in the proportion that a sincere man's religion is his highest interest. No one, either individual or state, may interfere with it. What the state can, consistently with right theory, do, in the matter of outward religion, will be considered hereafter. At present it is necessary only to enquire whether the right of worship or of expression of religious sentiment or faith has any limit? The only conceivable limits are these two: first, where the worship involves something that is outwardly immoral, or is opposed to the rights of individuals. The worship of Mylitta, at Babylon, as described by Herodotus, and the worship of Kali by the Thugs, may serve as examples. Certainly such. abominations may be put down by all the power of the state; religious rights never justified impurity or invasion of the rights of men. The other case is where a religion by its tenets and the authority put into the hands of the priests, is actually interfering with the legitimate powers of the state. Suppose, for instance, the Pope to assert the right of deposing kings who were enemies of the church, or even to endeavor to make void the laws of the state by his sentences excathedra, and that it was a received doctrine of the Catholic faith that he might so do; or suppose the members of some Protestant communion to have formed a political league with a foreign power to bring in a new sovereign. What should be done in a case like this? The answer is that opinion without acts flowing from it cannot be noticed; that when acts are committed which are against law and the existence

of the state there is some responsible individual to be dealt with as the doer of the acts; and that if the religionists as a body are implicated in treasonable attempts to subvert the government, they must still be made subject to the ordinary processes of law, unless they should break out into civil war, when, of course extreme measures can be justified.

of self-redress?

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If a man's rights are suddenly invaded, he does his best to Is there any right protect them, and superior strength or skill brings the issue. But there are many wrongs where self-defence is out of the question, as where men dispute about the fulfilment of a contract or their respective titles to land. Is there in such cases a right to redress one'sself, which often implies a right to decide in one's own case? If there were, in the case of a dispute about a contract both would have the right, for both claim to have the truth and justice on their side; so that there would spring up wars about contracts, as well as Hobbes' wars before contract. But there seems to be no such right; at the most, a man may get possession of a disputed thing with an intention to have the question of ownership submitted to some arbitrator. Self-redress implies not only subjective conviction that you are right, but actual right; and how can persons interested and selfish rightfully become judges in their own case. If a temporary overturn of society, as in a revolution, were to take place, men would betake themselves to wise and equitable persons for the adjustment of their disputes. Natural equity prescribes that men do not judge in their own causes. There is need of a higher wisdom provided with the means of enforcing its decisions as to what is just between man and man. This wisdom, if it can exist anywhere, is found in the STATE.

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If there cannot be said to be a right of the individua! to The right of de- repair his own wrongs, except when invaded by fending and redress sudden violence, still less can there then be an obligation to shield others from wrong, unless

the wrongs of

they form with him a natural society, like the family. But if there is no obligation, there is in the nature of man a sympathy with the injured, especially when they are helpless, and an indignation against wrong, which will lead him, with calculation of consequences to himself, to throw himself on the side of the injured. These noble impulses are eminently social, and allied with the noble virtues of courage and self-sacrifice. But if a man is without them, or if, when he sees wrong attempted upon the helpless, he is too weak to interfere, he violates no obligation; nay, further, if through cowardice or pure selfish regard for his own ease he will not take part in the affair on the right side, he still violates no obligation; he may behave basely or unmanfully in this, but there was no right in the injured party imposing on him the obligation of assistance, or calling on him to satisfy justice as if he had failed in fulfilling his obligations.

This supposed case shows how the social feelings and the rights and obligations of men conspire to make a society-life both necessary for man, and a certainty, if we could suppose man ever in a state of isolation. And it shows also that our moral feelings and our sense of rights would conspire with the desire of security in a state of disorder, to give rise to an association, to a union, for instance, of neighboring families, or villages, or districts, for mutual protection, out of which organized permanent institutions might grow.

state for other rea

sons.

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There are other considerations also derived from the docRights need the trine of rights itself which show that a state, or a just and permanent power, is needed, in order that a just and secure society of any considerable number of persons may be possible. Thus, in the first place, rights, as we have seen, are indefinite in some instances, and need that an acknowledged power should define them, once for all. Men need to know, for instance, when the patria potestas ceases, and when the grown-up child is authorized to do business on his own account, or who shall succeed to an intestate

estate within the family, who, if the deceased had no family. 2. There are seemingly a number of collisions of rights which need an interpreter, placed above all contending parties. Such is the case when a father bids a child do some act which interferes with the rights of others. So also the right of speech may seemingly collide with that of reputation; the right of self-defence with the attempt to redress a wrong; the right of property with the rights of locomotion; the right of worship with the state authority, or even its existence. 3. Certain infractions of rights are grave and others petty. Thus injuries to the good name of a person may be exceedingly trivial; or the rights of property may be invaded by the pettiest theft and by wholesale plunder alike, and the rights of persons by a violent assault and by an act partaking more of the nature of insult. The experience acquired by a standing power is needed to determine what law and justice ought to notice and what not, whether a litigiousness shall be encouraged which will make a man hated, or whether he shall be forced to use violence to redress his own wrongs. 4. There will often be cases, again, like many under the rights of contract and testamentary disposition, where strict right is felt to be wholly wrong, where the letter interferes with the spirit; as there are cases when unforeseen and extraordinary circumstances call for some relief, and others where an advantage is taken, under the forms of law, of the ignorance or simplicity of a contracting party. Hence we see that not only rules of justice but of equity also-which is the borderland where justice and benevolence meet, where man rises above the definitions of temporal rights, so as to imitate the infinite Creator who judges by the rule of his own intelligence, -need to be applied by some power higher than the individual. 5. It is absolutely necessary that the laws should be known, and should be so permanent that men can calculate upon them for a long time to come. When the laws are fixed,

*Aristotle's definition of equity makes it to be a rectification of law, where it is defective on account of its generality. Eth. Nicom., v.,

justice will not seem arbitrary, and will be respected, and confidence in an established order of things will exist. 6. The power of society is needed to make rights real, after it is ascertained what they are. The wrong-doer may flee, and the injured, if the execution of a sentence is entrusted to him, may be unable to leave his work for the pursuit. Or an orphan may be stripped of his patrimony by a man of fraud, or an unknown culprit needs to be ferreted out, or men in distant places refuse to fulfil their obligations. There is need of a power that is present in all parts of a land, that is stronger than any strong invader of rights, that has it for its constant work to administer justice, that knows what right demands, that has no fear of taking the side of the humblest. This permanent justice, armed with might, is embodied in the STATE.